Every Other World
by zombieArchaeopteryx
Summary: Deryn and Alek, in any and every alternate universe I can think of. Will include various genderswappings, crossovers, et cetera.
1. Dylan & Aleksandra

Dylan's gaze shifts from the Stormwalker to Aleksandra and back again. From where she stands behind the other leg, she can see a frown crease in his forehead.

"_You_," he says, slowly, "_piloted_ this barking contraption _all the way to Switzerland_?"

Her cheeks, already deep pink from the freezing Alpine air, flush with pride, and she fails to suppress a smile. "Not _all_ the way - Klopp helped. But yes, a not inconsiderable part of the journey."

"But you're a girl!" he protests, dumbfounded. He shakes his head. "Whatever they teach princesses in Austria, it's not what they do where I'm from."

She lets out an almost inaudible sigh and sets her jaw. Alek is not entirely unused to these sorts of comments. "I told you, my family has enemies. My father insisted I learn for my safety. I imagine a Darwinist girl could quite easily fly one of those dreadful jellyfish."

Dylan actually laughs. "Not barking likely. A girl would just want to make pets of the beasties, and if you get too attached you can't use them properly. The lady boffin excepted, of course."

"I doubt you could pilot a Stormwalker," Alek sniffs.

The boy folds his arms. "Aye, alright. You're on."

"Mr Sharp?" Dr Barlow appears at the entrance to the courtyard. "You wouldn't be shirking your duties now, would you?

"No, ma'am, of course not. I'll be right there," Dylan says. "Don't think you've gotten out of this," he adds to Alek.

Ten years later, Dylan Sharp crashes his wife's first runabout in the grounds of Konopischt and declares walker-piloting a barking ridiculous business anyway.


	2. Dylan & Alek

The dawn creeps in from the horizon, illuminating Dylan's cabin with its bluish light.

In an hour's time he'll have to report to topside for an altitude drill and he'll be dead shattered all day from lack of sleep. Not that he'll ever admit what exactly he's been losing sleep over, ever since Alek came aboard.

Things were never supposed to happen this way.

It's… it's barking staggering, that's what it is, Dylan thinks. He's never heard of anything like this happening. Well, of course he's heard the rumours of what some men are inclined to do. Everyone has, since it's a sodding criminal offence.

But this - this isn't like that at all.

At any rate, all he knows is that that barking prince does something to him. Sometimes he'll look at Alek and feel himself go scarlet. And sometimes, oh, maybe he'll smile at some daft joke - or like the previous afternoon, at his having climbed the ratlines fastest for the first time, and even though they were topside in the bracing wind Dylan had felt that same tingling warmth, same as that time in the machine room.

Those moments are the scariest, he reckons. He goes over them again and again in his head; they twist his insides and gnaw at his gut. Because this is impossible. And if it were just the attraction he could rationalise it, tell himself it's because he hasn't clapped eyes on a girl in a month, and push away that sinking feeling at the realisation that there not being any girls has never been a problem.

But it's not.

* * *

Alek has half nodded off when he's snapped back to reality by the knock at the machine room door. He yawns, runs a hand through his hair and rubs the sleep-grit from his eyes, before answering it.

"Hello, Dylan." The boy looks anxious, casting suspicious eyes around the corridor. "I have told you, Dr Barlow said…"

"Oh, let me in, you daft sod." He sighs. "It's a load of blether if you ask me, but if it bothers you then I promise I'll try my best not to affect the temperature, aye?"

"Well, I suppose it can't hurt…"

"Course it can't."

"So what was it you wanted to tell me?" he asks as Dylan shuts the door behind him and sits down beside the cargo box of the two remaining eggs, half in the glow of the light given off by the bacterial warmers and half in shadow.

"Um, I… oh, you know what, it's nothing," Dylan shakes his head. "Can't sleep, is all."

"I see." He sits down on the other side of the box, trying to think of the appropriate thing to say. "Er, are you homesick?" Alek finds himself wondering suddenly what Dylan's home might be like. A far cry from his own, he'll wager.

"No, I wouldn't say so. I miss Ma and Jaspert and friends I used to go to school with and that, but I guess I love the air too much."

"So you don't have a… what's the word… a girl? Or, I don't know, would a love be the right term?"

Dylan let out a nervous laugh, and even in the half-darkness Alek could have sworn he saw his cheeks colour. "No. Never had the time. No." Alek suspects there is more to it than Dylan's saying, but if he's unwilling to talk about it then he ought not to press the matter. "How are the lady boffin's eggs, then?"

"I wouldn't know," Alek says, "but they seem healthy."

"Excellent. It'll be a complete barking waste of time if we get to Constantinople and they're both dead."

"I imagine so."

"What do you reckon they are, though?" Dylan wonders, lowering his voice.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better - you're a Darwinist, after all. From my limited knowledge of er, eggs, I would say - some sort of bird?"

"Maybe it's a dragon."

Alek laughs. "Possibly. Or - wait, you don't mean to say Darwinists have actually fabricated… dragons?" The idea of fire-breathing monstrosities in the skies is quite chilling.

"Of course not, you ninny." Dylan rolls his eyes. "Daft Clankers."

Alek knows that this is only to be expected - after all, he wouldn't expect one of the crew to know all about walkers - but he can't help but feel such an utter fool around the Darwinists. Particularly with Dylan, someone his own age.

"Oh, sod it," he curses, getting to his feet. "Altitude drill. I have to report in five minutes. I've got to go, sorry. Look, Alek, I…" for a moment Dylan looks completely frustrated. He cuts himself off, clenching his hands into fists. "Nothing. No. Um. Bye."

"Goodbye," Alek says.

"Goodbye. Aye. I'll see you later."

Alek wonders what could be bothering him. There's certainly more to the midshipman than he might have supposed when he first met him. There generally is, with people.

Dylan shuts the door behind him, and Alek swears he hears a harsh whisper from beyond it.

"Oh, blisters."


	3. The Hunting Ground

_A/N: I always thought Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series (also known as Predator Cities, or the Hungry City Chronicles) would make a fantastic Leviathan crossover since they both contain steampunk and airships, alternate histories and "Darwinism" (of a sort, anyway)... so this happened. If you haven't read Mortal Engines: basically, in the very distant future half of mankind lives aboard moving ("traction") cities that hunt and consume smaller cities to survive. The other half doesn't. This causes conflicts. The airship trade is considered neutral. _

* * *

_Vienna, the Great Hunting Ground  
21st November, 992 Traction Era_

The deckplate lurched violently beneath Alek's feet; he was thrown off balance, nearly knocking over a chair as he steadied himself. Having spent most of his fifteen years aboard Vienna, he sensed in the city's vibrations the churning engines of the lower tiers.

"How fast are we going?" he asked.

Volger, barely perturbed by the ruckus, turned another page of the document he was examining. "I would say sixty miles an hour, perhaps more," he said, without looking up.

The argon lamp bolted to the ceiling swung merrily as the city convulsed with motion.

"Is such a speed necessary?" Alek was not in the habit of questioning his father's judgement - he was not the mayor of Vienna for no reason - but something about this was unnerving him.

It had been like this for days. Emergency council meetings, worried looks cast between the city's leading politicians - it had set them all on edge. Alek had barely seen his father and when he had, he looked tired and anxious, distracted.

If he hadn't known better - rather, if he wasn't so completely terrified by the idea - he might have said…

* * *

"They haven't got that much long left," Newkirk said, with a note of pity, as he lowered the binoculars. "Maybe a week at the most."

Deryn looked out of the _Leviathan_'s porthole, and saw in the distance a smoking mass of metal.

"At an educated guess, I would say Manchester." They both jumped, neither of them having heard Dr Barlow, the ship's first and only passenger, behind them. Strictly speaking, the Leviathan was a trading ship and not supposed to take passengers at all, but Dr Barlow had tattooed between her eyebrows a London Guild-mark, which was enough to get most people to do what you wanted. London had fallen on hard times, it was said, but the first Traction City hadn't lost its influence. Which was why Hobbes had been more than happy to take her along with their cargo of Shan Guonese silk to Stamboul - although as much as she was sure he respected all the Guildsmen and women of London, Deryn reckoned the doctor's offer of fifteen sovereigns had been a significant factor in the decision.

"Aye, ma'am. I expect you're right."

"Bit of a shame if you ask me. It's not a bad place, is it?" Newkirk had grown up in the air trade, neither townie nor mossie, though Deryn heard his mother, Captain Morvish of the _King Ludd_, came from a static settlement way out west. He couldn't be expected to understand things like she and the doctor did.

"No city ever said _I'll leave that one alone, it's not a bad place_," Deryn said, explaining what had been obvious to her since she was a wee child growing up aboard Glasgow. "It's the way Municipal Darwinism works - the stronger cities eat the weaker ones, aye?"

"I _know_ that, Midshipman Sharp. I'm just _saying_. All these people this time next week will have been put to work in Manchester's engines. And that's just the ones that survive - don't they usually execute the highest-ranking politicians and their families?"

"That's mossie propaganda!" Deryn thought it was, anyway. She was fairly certain. **  
**  
"In any case," Dr Barlow said, raising her voice, "I shall inform the captain. We must be on our guard to leave at a moment's notice. My business in Stamboul is of the utmost importance, and it wouldn't do at all for to be captured by Manchester, of all places."


	4. (Song Challenge)

**Cosmic Love - Florence + the Machine**

From the Leviathan's bridge Deryn can see, stretching out endlessly, the burning stars and drifting asteroids, and planets, some flecked blue with oceans, others dusty and barren.

Alek watches the milky glow of the galaxy in the sky above their heads swirl in Deryn's eyes, glassy pools of starlight.

And the ship moves on through the shifting light of space.

* * *

**What He Wrote - Laura Marling**

Her Ma brings her the letter on a cold morning in January, ice frosted around the sills of the steam-blurred windows. It is postmarked Vienna.

Alek's gone into great detail about the places and people he's visited; the sights, smells, sounds, flavours and textures of the city. Deryn smiles as she reads it, imagining him sitting at some elegant bureau in the palace, pen poised over this thick, expensive parchment (From the desk of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty Aleksandar von Habsburg, Emperor of Austria-Hungary) frowning in concentration on remembering absolutely everything.

He says he wishes she were here - and she does too, but it goes deeper than that. She wishes she could be there, and not as that common-as-muck invalid Scot that His Majesty will insist on fraternising with. Well, maybe she could have handled that. She wishes she hadn't gotten her legs half shot to pieces, wishes they hadn't found her out as a girl as she was bleeding half to death in sick bay, shaking with the pain, wishes she hadn't been packed off back to Glasgow.

And wishing, despite what princes - well, emperors - are wont to think, seldom makes things better.

She re-reads the letter twice before folding it back into the envelope and putting it in the drawer of her bedside table along with the others.

* * *

**This Ain't A Love Song - Scouting For Girls**

He keeps surprising himself - he knew it was his destiny to be emperor, he never expected to be as good at it as he is.

Alek lets the work consume him, throws himself into statecraft and diplomacy with the deftness and vigour that his father and Volger taught him. He meets with politicians from all over the continent, holds state dinners, travels the length and breadth of his war-torn empire to oversee reconstruction of the most damaged areas. Most nights he is too tired but to do anything but fall straight into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Others, he lies awake and goes over and over that moment in his head. He remembers Deryn's eyes shining with the tears she was too much of a soldier to shed, that fleeting embrace, inhaling the smell of Air Service issue soap and that faintest edge of spice clinging to her uniform, whispered goodbyes, her pulling away and resuming her pose of straight-backed military formality. The corner of her mouth twitched in a smile, and she gave a mock-salute before turning and walking away.

Try as he might, he cannot remember if she looked back.

* * *

**Doctor Who XI - Murray Gold**

"Trust me, it's a classic," Deryn says through a mouthful of popcorn, sitting down next to him on the sofa.

"So… it's about an alien… who travels in time… in a box?" Alek is failing to see how the British appear to take such a concept so seriously.

"That's about right, yeah. Now shush," she gestures to the television - or "telly", as she is wont to call it, "it's starting."

* * *

**Viva La Vida - Coldplay**

Facing a firing squad, Alek finds his mind wandering.

His executioners see the faraway look in his eyes and assume he is contemplating his downfall - the revolution that tore the Austria-Hungary apart, lead to the abdication and imprisonment of its emperor. Perhaps he is praying to a god that has done little to save him. Perhaps he is trying to compose himself. One of them remembers something his father, an old soldier, once told him. That the last thing any dying man remembers is his mother, and how it felt to be held as a tiny child, safe and loved and protected.

But he's thinking about an airship that hummed with its interlocking web of life, a wide blue sky and a midshipman with sandy-gold hair and a smile that made his heart skip and flutter. Fleetingly, he wonders whatever happened to him, where he is now, if he ever thinks about that tumbledown emperor he once knew. If he's all right.

He doesn't find out.


	5. A Time Of Magic

_A/N: A crossover with the BBC's Merlin - which is more or less based on Arthurian legend with a few differences, those mainly being that Merlin is Arthur's manservant, and they're around the same age (which in the case of both is quite a bit younger than they are in the legends). Oh, and magic is banned and punishable by death in Camelot, which is obviously a problem for people like Merlin, who are born with magic. _

* * *

They came for Alek at the darkest time before the dawn. Through the fog of sleep he heard voices, footsteps, the rattle of his chamber's door handle. Two silhouettes, one slender and the other bulky, he identified as his fighting arts instructor, Count Volger, and Otto Klopp, the Chief Groom.

"Young master, wake up!"

* * *

All night, Deryn had drifted in and out of a half-sleep plagued with fitful dreams. Eventually, with little time to go before sunrise, she had given up, and sat shivering with cold and nerves on her little wood and straw bed, trying not to wake Jaspert. The silence was oppressive.

* * *

Volger having told him they were heading out for an early hunting trip, Alek pulled on his most practical clothes and riding boots. This morning, there would be no need to look like the prince of the eastern kingdoms that he was. But he still wore the ring bearing the seal of his house, if only because its absence felt strange.

* * *

Unable to put it off any longer, Deryn dressed silently a set of her brother's old clothes, the breeches, tunic and shirt painstakingly resewn to suit her build and hide any trace of a femininity. The boots were older, her father's, she thought.

The pack of supplies was already prepared, concealed under her bed.

Before leaving the house, Deryn put the note where she knew her mother would find it, and took her sword.

* * *

Alek's horse was a grey named Storm, already waiting in the stables.

He, Volger, Klopp and two guards rode out of the gates slowly, quietly. As they closed behind him Alek glanced back at the castle, his family's for centuries. And with any luck, for many years more. But with his parents gone to negotiate an alliance against the nomad raiders pushing further towards them, there were doubts in many minds as to whether their luck would hold.

Pushing such doubts away, Alek turned around to follow Volger's lead as they neared the forests, headed west.

* * *

It was still dark as Deryn untethered the horse and lead him to the road, through the shadows swathing the village she had known as home all her fifteen years.

There was light in the southern sky as the sun rose in the east, and riding towards it, she felt, for the first time, like a pilgrim.

* * *

They stopped for breakfast in a clearing. Alek was left in charge of the kindling as Klopp went in search of more firewood, but it was damp from the autumn rain and impossible to light.

He checked Klopp couldn't see him, and concentrated, murmuring softly.

It ignited with a crackle of flame.

Volger raised an eyebrow. "You would be wise to hide that in Camelot, Your Highness."

It took a moment for Alek to realise what he had just said.

"What do you mean, in Camelot? We aren't going - Volger, what are you talking about?"

Volger cursed his indiscretion. He had planned to wait until they were further away from home, when there would be no chance of Alek turning back.

"Aleksandar," he said, almost softly, "we cannot go back."

* * *

The merchant in the small town she stopped for food in eyed Deryn with interest.

"Not often you see one so young as you travelling alone. Where are you bound?"

"Camelot," she replied without looking up, handing over the money.

He chuckled, pocketing it. "Camelot? What are you, a trader? Or - you're not after joining those knights, are you? My youngest saw them riding past once, when we were down south, won't speak of anything else, bless him. But then, last I heard, they only take those of noble stock."

She smiled. "That's a barking mad idea, sir."

* * *

With his parents dead, his kingdom most likely fallen, and little hope of him retaking the throne, Alek's only refuge lay far west, at the court of his cousin, King Arthur of Camelot, where he could live in exile, Volger had explained.

Alek had nodded without really listening.

They carried on, and the nights and days blurred past like moments.

* * *

The long hours of riding allowed doubts to grow in her mind like seedlings. On the day she first saw the spires of the citadel through the treetops, she almost turned back. But by then she was too far - and her doubts never lasted for very long.

* * *

Alek, Volger, Klopp and the guards, Bauer and Hoffman, arrived in Camelot in the late morning on a bright, wet day, leading their horses through the gates to the royal stables, where a handful of coins and a show of the coat of arms emblazoned on Alek's tunic was enough to persuade the grooms to keep them there.

"Has word been sent ahead?" Alek asked Volger as they ascended the steps to the castle. It was like nothing Alek had ever seen, shining with the midday sun, towering beneath a sky full of rainbows.

"No. But from what I hear, Arthur is not the sort of man who would refuse asylum to his cousin," he replied. And then, with what Alek could have sworn was a note of some softer tone, "we will be safe here, Your Highness."

* * *

Deryn arrived in Camelot with the last stragglers of wandering merchants and traders here for the market, handing over the last of her money to one of them to mind her horse while she was gone.

She skirted along the outside of the courtyard, finding a passage leading to a back door into the castle. Not expecting to find anyone beyond it, she went through and collided with a dark-haired young man in a red cravat carrying a leather-bound book embossed with gold lettering reading Noble Houses of Germania and Carantania.

"Oh, sorry!" she trilled, for a moment forgetting her voice. "I mean, sorry." She cleared her throat. "Er, you couldn't tell me where I might find the king, could you?"

"Well," he said, a blush reddening his cheeks, "I suppose I am his manservant, it is my job to know where he is. He'll be in the throne room, I could take you there if you like."

"Aye sir, that'd be grand."

"No problem, Mister...?"

"Oh, just, er - Dylan."

* * *

The doors to the throne room opened with a squeal of hinges onto a vast chamber, at the centre of which there was a great oaken table, perfectly round. It had no head, but it was evident that the blond man in the centre was the leader of the red-cloaked men sat around, and husband of the woman dressed in regal silk behind him.

King Arthur Pendragon of Camelot rose to his feet upon seeing them, and Alek and his companions bowed deeply.

"Your Majesty," Alek said. His nerves jittered, with only his deeply-rooted sense of etiquette having prevented him from asking Volger to speak for them. "I am Aleksandar, Prince of Hohenberg."

"Yes. I had heard your kingdom had fallen."

He swallowed. "It has, sire."

* * *

"Bloody hell," Deryn murmured as the manservant, whose name she couldn't remember, lead her into  
the throne room. "It's the sodding king. And who are they?"

Five or so men were stood in front of the round table at the centre, and even from the other end of the room Deryn could see their tired, unshaven faces, their clothes torn and spattered with mud. One of them was only a boy, barely older than herself, but there was something distinctly dignified and self-important in the way he held himself, like the local lords she had seen back home, even though his dress was more typical of a commoner.

"Doesn't he look a wee bit busy?" she asked the manservant, but he gave her a confident smile and approached the table.

"Er, excuse me sire?"

And the king, without looking round, sighed through gritted teeth. "Merlin, can't you see I'm in the middle of something?"


End file.
